While most of my previous blogs may have seamed like rants that schools need be ‘modern’ and to try and keep up with the times and I just found a video on teacher-tube that looks at the same issue. Shift-happens totally blew me away, it really makes you think about why we need to teach problem solving and creativity not just content, skills and simple processes. Some of the ideas proposed are amazing, consider the implications of teaching students for jobs that don’t yet exist. Think about the importance of the web and social networking sites if that many million children are already using my space and billions of Google enquiries are made every year. This is just enormous evidence of the changes that are already happening. The video claimed a weeks worth of the times newspaper contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century, it makes being a future teacher sound both daunting and very exciting. With that much information out there it becomes more important to know how to find it, use it and how to share it. More than anything this should get you thinking…..
3 steps is a teacher tube video that challenges teachers to think about how learning should be occurring in the 21st century. It assumes that technology could be as seamlessly integrated into our classroom as it already is in our homes and the workforce-and why not? Teaching must be relevant to the students and their world and this video challenges teachers to consider their practices. It looks at the effect of globalisation on schooling and how teachers can connect students with the world. The first step in this process is creating a creative and innovative learning space. This step is all about encouraging teachers to think beyond pen and paper learning and to embrace creative and novel ways of teaching. The second step is teaching the skills of collaboration, cooperation and competition. The video emphasises the need for learning to be a social and collaborative experience. The final step was providing oppertunities to connect with students around the world.
It seams the research is in! Incorporating ICT into other Subjects has been found to be strong motivators for students and can help keep them on task (Becta 2003).
Contrary to popular belief ICT was not found to prevent students working things out themselves (Resnick, 2006) instead it was found to increase the time they spent on academic pursuits outside the classroom and to broaden their knowledge. Students were also found to take more care writing drafts and gained self-confidence from the higher quality of work produced with the aid of spell-check and publishing programs. This provides more examples of the need to integrate subjects and to increase use of technology as a tool rather than a stand-alone subject.
I have just finished reading Computer as a paintbrush(2006) and found it a very fascinating reading. Today in schools there is a lot of focus on computers as an exact method or as a branch of science, but this article inspired me to think about computer learning in a new light, as a creative endeavour almost like an art.
The author strongly believes in the use of technologies that can challenge children’s thinking and get them to work creatively in a fun and playful manner. It also looks at the negative technologies which are pre-programmed to elicit a certain response and require no (or little) interaction from children such as the TV. As I teacher I believe it is important to be able to recognize the difference to be able to get the most out of technology based learning.
I strongly agreed with any attempt to move computer based learning from the realms of simply publishing word documents and internet research to a creative and exploratory medium with a strong emphasis on fun and meaningful learning.
Published in:
Singer, D., Golikoff, R., and Hirsh-Pasek, K. (eds.), Play = Learning: How play motivates and enhances children’s cognitive and social-emotional growth. Oxford University Press. 2006. Computer as Paintbrush: Technology, Play, and the Creative Society. Mitchel Resnick. MIT Media Laboratory
In the article Listening to the Natives, (2005) Prensky Looks at the gap between students that are born in the digital age, who he calls digital natives (2001) and teachers (and parents) who often are ‘digital immigrants’ . Part of the solution to bridging this gap includes collaborative learning on the teachers part and teachers changing their mindset about the purpose of education and how we learn.
Also we must listen to the students and teach in a way that caters to how they want to learn. I think we could take this further than just being about technology, if students interests and learning styles (including how they happily learn and explore out of school hours) were considered in all subject areas we would have students wanting to learn and readily engaged in school. That’s where schools need to be heading in the future.
